Series Preview: Texas A&M at No. 6 LSU
Where: Alex Box Stadium — Baton Rouge, Louisiana
When: Thursday 6:00 p.m. CT (SEC Network)
Friday 8:00 p.m. CT (ESPNU)
Saturday 2:30 p.m. CT (ESPN2)
Pitching matchups
- Friday: Brigham Hill (RHP, 4-2, 3.16) vs. Alex Lange (RHP, 3-2, 4.09)
- Saturday: Stephen Kolek (RHP, 1-1, 5.23) vs. Jared Poche (LHP, 5-1, 0.90)
- Sunday: Corbin Martin (RHP, 2-2, 4.07) vs. Eric Walker (RHP, 3-0, 3.69)
Scouting LSU
It's another battle between the Aggies and the Tigers on the playing field. Texas A&M took two out of three in College Station last season, while the Tigers won the series, 2-1, in Baton Rouge two years ago in the highly anticipated No. 1 vs. No. 2 match-up of SEC baseball powers. There won't be as much hype and fanfare this weekend as Texas A&M enters the weekend unranked, while the Tigers are No. 6 in the D1 Baseball poll. However, the stakes are still high, especially for a 1-5 Aggie team looking to get back into the SEC race.
Game two will see veteran left-hander Jared Poche on the hill. Until last weekend, Poche had surrendered only one earned run in 36 innings of work in 2017. Basically, he's the best college pitcher in America. However, he did struggle last weekend against Florida, giving up six hits and four runs in only four innings of action. Was this a brief hiccup or a sign of future struggles? That's a huge question to be answered because the typically "good" Poche is nearly un-hittable.
Eric Walker will throw on Saturday. The freshman from Arlington was hit hard last weekend in Gainesville, but overall he has a respectable 3-0 record and a 3.69 ERA.
At the plate, the Tigers are solid, with a team batting average of .304 and six starters hitting above the .300 mark. The run production is centered around one big bat, though. Greg Deichmann is putting up big-time offensive power numbers. He has eight home runs, 31 RBI, and a glossy .677 slugging percentage to go with his .344 batting average. Cole Freeman leads the team in hitting (.368), on-base percentage (.479) and stolen bases (9), so he'll be a top priority for Aggie pitchers to keep off the base-paths this weekend.
Despite Kramer Roberson's six errors at shortstop, the Tigers are a good fielding club as a unit, boasting a sharp .981 fielding percentage.
Texas A&M storylines to watch
The biggest keys for Texas A&M this weekend – especially for Thursday and Friday – are stellar pitching and flawless defense. The mindset going into games against Alex Lange and Jared Poche should be that two runs wins the game. That means Brigham Hill has to get back to being the Brigham Hill of February and not the mid-March version that has been inconsistent and behind in the count. Stephen Kolek has to hit his spots and get ahead in the count, and the Aggie defense needs to do its job behind him. Walks and errors will be a sure-fire recipe for defeat against a couple of LSU pitchers that have the capability to throw 7-8 innings of shut-out ball.
Brittany Broussard
Texas A&M pitcher Corbin Martin will need to keep the Tiger bats at bay on Sunday as he faces off with LSU's Eric Walker.
On Sunday, Corbin Martin will need to hold the rope and find a way to keep LSU from crossing home plate like he did last weekend against Vanderbilt. Martin has rarely been efficient, so it's unreasonable to ask for a 110-pitch complete game gem. But follow last week's playbook. Keep grinding through trouble and use that fastball and nasty curveball to get out of innings unscathed. Then turn it over to Mitchell Kilkenny who had probably his best outing of the year on Tuesday, closing out Texas State without allowing a base-runner in two innings.
At the plate, the Aggies will need to put the ball in play and use their team speed to manufacture a few runs against the high-powered guns of Lange and Poche. That means Nick Choruby needs to find success reaching base in the lead-off spot and allowing guys like Braden Shewmake and Joel Davis to bring him around to score. Choruby had a big night on Tuesday, reaching base four times. He'll need to duplicate that effort to give the Aggies a chance to score a few runs.
If the Aggies are lucky to catch Lange or Poche on an off night early in the game, they must take advantage and pounce quickly. The best chance to do damage against an elite pitcher is to get them scrambling early before they can settle into the game. George Janca has started coming out of his slump and has moved his way up to the middle of the order. He must be a run-producer in the middle of the order, along with Shewmake and Davis, for A&M to have a chance to win this series.
What's at stake this weekend
This sounds like a broken record, but everything is at stake this weekend. Everything will be at stake during every SEC series from now on as the Aggies attempt to dig out of an early 1-5 hole. The team stopped the bleeding last Sunday, beating Vanderbilt and then taking care of Texas State on the road. Now the team has to start making up ground. Alex Box Stadium is typically not the ideal venue to make up ground, especially for a Texas A&M program that has several scars from several heartbreaking losses in regional play at "The Box," along with some recent losses in SEC play.
The goal is to win a pair against an LSU team that is talented but has struggled at times in 2017. At 3-6, the Aggies can come home to the friendly confines of Olsen Field with some winnable games on the schedule and a .500 record within reach. If the team manages only a single win this weekend, coming back from five down in the loss column (2-7) will be a tall task and will force the Aggies to start pulling some weekend sweeps to get back in the hunt for a spot in a regional. Return to Texas at 1-8, and it's hard to see how the team can realistically dig out of that hole.
